Republicans are taking the long view - of necessity

Most predictions aren't worth much. Either not enough is known to forecast reliable trends, or the prediction is of something that is so easy to anticipate that people wonder why you are even talking when you say it. This one, from Digby, tends towards the second category. Strangely enough, not many Democrats seem to know how true it is.

I have been saying for some time now that the Republicans can read the tea leaves and they know this isn't their election, so they are teeing up the next one. They aren't going to make it easy for the Democrats --- they'll damage him or her as much as possible so that he or she can't govern effectively. But they are going to lose and they know it, and they're going to blame it all on their lost boy Bush and the maverick who tried to succeed him for not being conservative enough.

The results of this Fall's Presidential election were determined when

• Bush's invasion of Iraq failed to find WMD's and became a widely-predicted but badly-planned-for and severely botched occupation and counterinsurgency operation. The fact that it drags on now without known purpose, merely so Bush does not have to admit that his voluntary and unnecessary war is lost and bring the troops home, is not a surprise to most voters.
• After his narrow win in 2004 Bush announced he was out to destroy Social Security.
• FEMA proved that it could not handle one of the three widely predicted disasters expected since 2001 or earlier,
  
• The Republicans lost Congress in 2006 largely over their corruption and incompetence, and
• Following the collapse of the housing bubble the mortgage market collapsed and took the credit worldwide markets with it, leading to the current recession with layoffs and everything.

The voters are quite properly blaming the Republicans.

There will be a Democratic President in office in January 2009. It will not be a blow-out election like 1964, though, because the Republican Party seems poised to nominate the candidate long known to have the best possible chance of holding down Republican losses, John McCain. The only surprise not seen at least two years ago is that the Democratic President may be Barack Obama rather than Hillary Clinton.

So the Republicans are taking the long view. They are going to accept their losses this Fall and blame Bush and McCain for those losses. Why? Because Bush and McCain are insufficiently conservative. Conservatism cannot fail - individuals fail because they are insufficiently conservative. Then the conservatives know what they are going to do after the lost election.

They have already started with their threatened filibusters and procedural obstructions in the Senate. After the election the conservatives are going increase their efforts to make America ungovernable. Like any classic minority insurgency, they will work every way possible to destroy the legitimacy of the current government and then promise they will being in good governance when they are given the power to replace the current government they are trying to destroy.

That's what America has to look forward to. For all his promises, Obama (If he wins) will not bring peace to Washington or this nation. The conservatives won't let him, because that would legitimate his government and prevent them from regaining power.

Conservatives created the current situation, they can't fix it, and they can't allow anyone else to fix it either. That is the long view, again brought to America by conservatives.